A PUB landlady has warned that Wokingham’s traffic chaos could see her out of business by Christmas – and she is furious.
Last week, the Market Place regeneration project saw Denmark Street reopen and a section of Broad Street by the town hall close to traffic. At the same time, parts of Langborough Road were made one way to help drivers get through the town.
However, as we reported last week, the net result has been traffic chaos with many drivers reportedly taking hours to travel short distances – a petition has been launched demanding changes.
Now, Julie Taylor, the landlady of The Duke’s Head in Denmark Street, is warning that the shut road will cause an accident as drivers ignore signs alerting them to the closures and are forced to turn around at the Langborough to Denmark Street mini roundabout. The Wokingham Paper witnessed several vehicles making U turns on the roundabout while preparing this story.
And she said that her trade is suffering as a result: drivers who used to drive up Denmark Street to use the pub’s car park face what she says is a half-hour diversion to get round the town centre and end up in Langborough Road’s one way system. Instead, they are driving elsewhere.
“If people have to go round the one-way system, they’re not going to spend 30 minutes to an hour to get through the traffic,” she told The Wokingham Paper.
“In the early evenings, between 4pm and 7pm, we used to have a lot of people coming in, but now they’re not.
“There have been a lot of people complaining.”
And Mrs Taylor said that a simple help for their business would be to move the road closure back a few metres to allow customers to get in and out of the pub’s car park regardless of whether they come from Langborough Road or Denmark Street.
“All we’re asking for is for it to be moved back to let people get into our car park.
“I can’t survive until the end of the December not having access to the car park. If people do decide to come, they’ve got pay to use the other car parks. They’re not going to do that.”
Mrs Taylor has concerns about the drivers who are ignoring the Langborough Road closure signs, warning that those attempting to turn on the mini-roundabout will cause an accident.
“You can see them trying to reverse around to get past the roundabout. They’re getting in the way of emergency vehicles. People are still going up Langborough Road and we’re losing trade.”
However, earlier this week Wokingham Borough Council attempted to do exactly that but stopped after 30 minutes due to the chaos it caused. Despite the setback, they are vowing to look again to come up with an alternative solution.
Cllr Chris Bowring, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, said: “We understand the concerns of The Duke’s Head and attempted a solution this week by allowing traffic to turn right from Denmark Street to Langborough Road only to access the pub car park.
“Unfortunately the result, within half an hour, was a dangerous, almost chaotic situation. Cars immediately began attempting to ignore the closure all together, which created an unsafe situation. Other cars were forced to turn around in the pub car park which also caused problems. The original closure had to be reinstated by the site traffic manager, who is responsible for safety.
“It might still be possible to find a safe solution and our contractors are working on a plan that could potentially be implemented later this week.”
A frustrated Ms Taylor said: “They tried it for around 10 minutes. The reason why it caused chaos was because they didn’t have any signs up.”
